The building of the American Army during WWII, from a tiny, outdated and ill-equipped force, into one of the mightiest armies in the world was rightly described by Sir Winston Churchill as being a "prodigy of organization." Its value to the Allied cause was immeasurable and it had a fine fighting record all over the world. It was a marvelously well-equipped army, thanks to American inventiveness, know-how, and technical prowess, and by 1945 it lead the world in weaponry, strategic mobility and logistic capabilities. U.S. Army Handbook 1939-1945 is fully illustrated with a varied and exciting selection of contemporary action photographs.
From the opening shots of the Second World War in Poland in September 1939, through the Blitzkrieg to the fall of France and the Low Countries, the German Army was at the forefront of battle. It remained in the thick of the action - the Eastern Front, North Africa, the Balkans, Scandinavia, North West Europe - right up until the last desperate shots were fired over the ruins of a crumbling Third Reich in May 1945. As the instrument with which Hitler was to achieve his plan for world domination, the German Army was at the cutting edge of twentieth century military history. Before the emergence of the US Army as a force to be reckoned with later in the Second World War, for the Germany Army was the most powerful, efficient and well-equipped fighting force in the world.
This book, published to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day, is a graphic account of the storming and taking of Hitler’s Festung Europa by the Allies during the final eleven months of the Second World War. The book shows spread-by-spread the relentless progress of the epic war in the European Theater of Operations, and focuses on the world-famous engagements such as Operation Market-Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, the bombing of Dresden and other German cities, the fall of Berlin, and VE Day itself. Written by a leading military historian and including a wealth of first-hand accounts on an audio CD, the Imperial War Museum’s WW2 Victory in Europe Experience contains 30 facsimile items of memorabilia integrated into the pages of the book. The reader can re-live this momentous period of history by examining maps, diaries, letters, and other items which up till now have remained filed or exhibited in the Imperial War Museum and other museum collections in Northern Europe.